Leonard Pitts Jr. commentary: Even as early as preschool, black children harmed by bias

Also in Opinion

Subscribe to The Dispatch

Already a subscriber?
Enroll in EZPay and get a free gift!
Enroll now.

Wednesday March 26, 2014 5:31 AM

What excuses will they make this time?

Meaning that cadre of letters-to-the-editor writers and conservative pundits who so reliably say
such stupid things whenever the subject is race. Indeed, race is the third rail of American
conscience; to touch it is to be zapped by rationalizations, justifications and lies that defy
reason, but that some must embrace to preserve for themselves the fiction of liberty and justice
for all. Otherwise, they’d have to face the fact that advantage and disadvantage, health and
sickness, wealth and poverty, life and death, are still parceled out according to melanin content
of skin.

So they become creative in their evasions.

They use made-up facts (Trayvon Martin was actually casing the neighborhood) and invented
statistics (black men and boys commit 97.2 percent of all the crime in America), they murder
messengers (“You’re a racist for pointing out racism!”), they discredit the source (Can you really
trust a government study?).

One waits, then, with morbid fascination to see what excuse those folks will make as federal
data released last week reveal that African-American children are significantly more likely to be
suspended — from preschool. Repeating for emphasis: preschool, that phase of education where the
curriculum encompasses colors, shapes, finger painting and counting to 10. Apparently, our capacity
for bias extends even there. According to the Department of Education, while black kids make up
about 18 percent of those attending preschool, they account for 42 percent of those who are
suspended once — and nearly half of those suspended more than once.

Armed with that information, there are many questions we should be asking:

Are black kids being suspended for things that would earn another child a timeout or a talking
to?

If racial bias pervades even the way we treat our youngest citizens, how can anyone still say it
has no impact upon the way we treat them when they are older?

What does being identified as “bad” at such an early age do to a child’s sense of himself, his
worth and his capabilities?

Does being thus identified so young play out later in life in terms of higher dropout rates and
lower test scores?

How can we fix this, build a society in which every one of our children is encouraged to stretch
for the outermost limits of his or her potential?

Those are the kinds of smart, compassionate questions we should ask. But again, we’re talking
about the third rail of American conscience. So one braces for dumb excuses instead.

Maybe someone will contend that they thuggishly refuse to color inside the lines.

And you may rest assured someone will say that for us even to have the discussion proves hatred
of white people.

What a long, strange road we have traveled from the high land of idealism and hope to which the
human-rights movement brought us 50 years ago, down to the swampy lowland of justification and
circumscribed horizons we find ourselves slogging through now. It is noteworthy that this story of
institutional bias against children barely out of diapers scarcely skimmed — much less penetrated —
an American consciousness presently preoccupied by basketball brackets and the mystery of a doomed
jetliner.

Small wonder. Those things ask very little of us, other than a love for sport and a capacity to
feel bad for other people’s misfortune. This, on the other hand, cuts to the heart of who we
are.

Last week, we learned that their schools routinely bend little black boys and girls toward
failure. And the people who make excuses should just save their breath.